Ozark resident James Timothy Turner spent the last five years hosting seminars and teaching followers how to defraud the United States.

The president and face of the sovereign citizen group, Republic for the united States of America, held training sessions near his Alabama home and at various locations across the country teaching people how to prepare bonds and them to submit to the Internal Revenue Service to pay off their debts.

According to the Republic for the united States of America website, the
group formed in 2010 by claiming its right “to exist as a free and
independent people on our land, thus exercising our God-given
unalienable rights as defined in our Constitution and the Bill of
Rights.”

With Turner's arrest and subsequent conviction on 10 federal charges, his followers in southeast Alabama began to scatter to other parts of the state and nation, according to multiple sources in the region.

But, the sovereign citizen movement in the nation as well as in Alabama continues to grow following the downturn of the economy and growing distrust in the government.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks the sovereign citizen movement, estimates there were about 100,000 sovereign citizens with hard-core beliefs in 2011 and another 200,000 who were “testing out” sovereign citizen beliefs by challenging speeding tickets and drug laws.

The state of Alabama has hundreds of sovereign citizens with the majority concentrated in Dale, Houston and Coffee counties, according to Ryan Lenx, a senior writer with SPLC.

“There is a large anti-government sentiment down there. It is hard to know who they are affiliated with,” Lenx said.

Coffee County Sheriff Dave Sutton said there are multiple federal investigations and lawsuits involving sovereign citizens who aren’t paying taxes or their mortgages and who have filed predatory liens against citizens and businesses.

Dale County Sheriff Investigator Tim Byrd estimated there were about 100 sovereign citizens living in his county alone.

“We have them,” he said. “We have had a lot. They are currently fragmented, scattered. The arrest and indictment (of Turner) did a lot to deter the situation.”

Lenx said the hierarchy of the Republic for the united States of America live in Alabama, but none have reached the prominence of Turner.

“In the last three years that hasn’t been a figure in the sovereign citizens like Tim Turner,” Lenx said. “The ideas that he brought to the radical right – we are seeing those ideas percolate into other groups – some started by his former followers.

“He is one of the most influential sovereign citizens out there today,” Lenx said.